Social Media & The Election

I was out of the office for most of yesterday and since some technical people have stolen my laptop in the pretence of fixing it (its been over a month now) I’ve been a bit late on commenting on the election results. But it’s has been interesting reading everyone else’s comments – especially surrounding how much influence each opponents social media activities have had on their campaigns and the overall result.

I was shown some facts yesterday which could be pretty conclusive:

Facebook Friends

Obama 2,663,024

McCain 643,047 (apparently he lost about 300 friends during the election)

MySpace Friends

Obama 841,024

McCain 224,191

I also came across this post by Jennifer Leggio who does raise a few good points about how easy it is for us all to become over excited about the impact of social media and I have to agree. Although I think that making a connection with people online through social media had an important impact on Obama’s campaign, the election wasn’t won because Obama’s had more friends on Facebook and Myspace than McCain.

But at the end of the day what will be most interesting is what Obama’s team do with the connection they have made through social media now that the election is over.